In recent years there has been a flurry of interest in the workings of the mind and in memory. Many artists are searching their pasts or reliving their childhood’ and translating that in their work. Memory of the past is real, solid something that cannot be changed. Or can it? Many have discovered that memory has more to do with today than it does about the past; changing to conform with who you are now. Old memories are mediated by current events. When we experience an event it becomes a part of us, it changes how we interpret today and changes how we interpret, or remember, yesterday.
Roland Barth in Camera Lucida writes, "I can’t reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph. It exists only for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture." Barth doesn’t share this picture of his mother with his readers. The image would be incomplete for them; it could not convey the same meaning for them as it does for him.
In this series of digitally manipulated images I have used a number of "indifferent pictures" taken at a distant moments in time. Old photographs, containing the aura of memory, but that are essentially empty, without history or context except for what the viewer brings with them.
This installation is an anatomy of memory. Changing with time, the time the viewer spends walking around the installation, perspective and the influence of others. The images remain static but it’s the viewer that changes. When something is gained, a glimpse at the overall image, something is lost, the details.